Thread: Voteban!

Howdy,

Would you PLEASE turn on voteban on the crackhouse server! It has gotten completely swamped with hackers and very rarely is there and admin on to police the situation.
If you would use it the community could handle the situation immediately plus, it would give you all an easy way in the server logs to see who is cheating. I ran and designed servers for years and found this to be the best way to clean up your servers of cheats with little effort.

Voteban has already been brought up as a subject on another server. We have a very dedicated admin team who are available within a few clicks, and voteban would just cause more hassle here than it would bring ease.

What Ghostly said. Also, with such a large population on the server on a regular basis, it would be near useless because the majority of the people would have to voteban the hacker. I'm sure we all know how well that goes. If a hacker messes with the server, just contact an admin. They'll be happy to help.

The voteban function is nice but poses issues.

First, it does not permanently ban someone. This means it only removes hackers temporarily. Mollifying an issue is not the same as stopping it.

Second, the voteban function gets abused. The abuse appears in two forms. One way is direct abuse. This means votebanning a player who may not be doing something wrong just to remove him. The other way is to remove anyone who may be potentially hacking.

It should be said that there are a great deal of hackers on CSS. As a crackhouse admin I have seen my fair share. I've also seen many more false alarms. The biggest complaint I've heard is that someone is shooting through walls. Indeed shooting through walls is indicative of hacking, but it depends. Sometimes shadows show through walls. That corner by the doorway at the bottom of the stairs is known for that. Sometimes shadows can be seen through the fence.

Then we must look at the game itself. This game is old. This game is simple. Anyone who keeps the crosshairs at head level and controls their fire can get headshots. Someone who watches movement patterns can potentially pick people through walls and shoot at head level.

I am not saying that people that do this are never hackers. I am merely saying you should consider all aspects.

If you really do have a hacker problem, we have a forum and a vent server. Using those will give you quicker access to admins who could permanently remove a hacker instead of just removing him temporarily. You can also add admins to steam friends.

Originally Posted by Moose Spoon

First, it does not permanently ban someone. This means it only removes hackers temporarily. Mollifying an issue is not the same as stopping it.

Lots of regulars record demos of hackers before they get banned in the server with voteban turned on (this is a big success in the Dust2 server which is pretty low on admins at the moment).

I've also seen lots of demos recorded by regulars from CH lately, and I think it would be a good idea to enable voteban. We have lots of committed regulars and players who can work together to keep the server clean when no admins are available (which unfortunately happens sometimes).

I'm sure management will look into this Meatbag, thanks for the suggestion!

Admins your points are correct, but are not accurate to the situation. Regular players should not have the right to permanently ban. Voteban is not intended for that. With a large group of players it is nearly impossible for there to be a consensus to ban someone if only a few believe one is hacking. When it is plainly obvious someone is hacking voteban is the quickest fix. When hacking is in no question, all players agree fairly quickly. With voteban you do not have to pause your playing, go to forum, dick with vent(which a lot of people don't use) or hope an admin shows when you call him.

Voteban does not create any new hassles for admins. Don't forget you can set the amount of time a players is banned, so there isn't any hassle with someone having to be unbanned in the future. Plus, as I said in my first post you would have a record in your logs each time a person was banned that is easy to search for. If a person is banned multiple times by his fellow players then Admins can decide on a permanent ban and also have a record to back up their decision.

I play your crack house server a lot and you do have a daily problem. Some hackers are even bragging that they can get away with it on this server because admin won't do anything about it. At this point I tend to agree with them. I used voteban on all my servers for over three years, both small and large populations. Our clan's servers never had a problem with hacking. It was well known hacking would be taken care of immediately. Voteban is a nice tool. Please let us use it.

I am not a crackhouse admin. However i am a Dust2 admin and D2 has voteban enabled. I have seen the issues it causes along with the problems it has temporarily put a bandaid on. As it was stated before We have forums which anybody can access shoutbox and request assistance. Steam has a browser so you do not have to tab out, and then you just type in noobgalore.us it also remembers logins so you do not have to go through that everytime. Steam friends your admins on the server. I have ALOT of my regs on friends list to keep myself and the other D2 admins updated at all times when we are not in the server. Ventrilo is another valuable resource, it takes 5 minutes to get setup 5 minutes to get registered by somebody. Then A you can choose to idle in a channel or B sit in the Crackhouse channel while you play and change channels to find an A, GA, SA, SSA for the server cutting down on the time it takes to permanently fix the situation. I promise you using these 3 resources will get the results you are looking for. I was a reg for a while and i have been in the position and same mind set as you before.

While I am a hideout admin, I was almost votebanned on Office because no admin was on, they wante to votebanned me because I said "Hi" on the mic, it got to 9 out of 10 votes before I told them I was an admin in the ccomnunity and they got scared after that. :0 you see the problems voteban can cause.

Originally Posted by Meatbag

Admins your points are correct, but are not accurate to the situation. Regular players should not have the right to permanently ban. Voteban is not intended for that. With a large group of players it is nearly impossible for there to be a consensus to ban someone if only a few believe one is hacking. When it is plainly obvious someone is hacking voteban is the quickest fix. When hacking is in no question, all players agree fairly quickly. With voteban you do not have to pause your playing, go to forum, dick with vent(which a lot of people don't use) or hope an admin shows when you call him.

Voteban does not create any new hassles for admins. Don't forget you can set the amount of time a players is banned, so there isn't any hassle with someone having to be unbanned in the future. Plus, as I said in my first post you would have a record in your logs each time a person was banned that is easy to search for. If a person is banned multiple times by his fellow players then Admins can decide on a permanent ban and also have a record to back up their decision.

I play your crack house server a lot and you do have a daily problem. Some hackers are even bragging that they can get away with it on this server because admin won't do anything about it. At this point I tend to agree with them. I used voteban on all my servers for over three years, both small and large populations. Our clan's servers never had a problem with hacking. It was well known hacking would be taken care of immediately. Voteban is a nice tool. Please let us use it.

This logic is even more problematic. If there is indeed someone hacking, and everyone just did a voteban, he would be back after the temp ban is over. If you get an admin, it is assured he will be banned from all of our servers permanently, not just one temporarily. And before you bring in the idea of allowing people to vote on a duration undermines admins and pretty much makes them pointless. Same with time being added every time they're banned. It would make the servers out of control

What insurance is there that It would only ban hackers? It could ban people who are just good at an old game or a player who is a bit annoying but doing nothing wrong.